| Information Management
Clean Data
PEN Clinical Audit Tool
Filtering 'Recipes' available for the PEN Clinical Audit Tool
Practice Health Atlas
IM Resources
The Victorian Statewide Referral Form
Medicare Australia's notice on electronic referrals - November 2009
Practice Incentives Program (PIP) eHealth Initiative - August 2009
Medicare Health Professional Online Services (HPOS)
PIP, SIP and Care plans for MD2 or Genie users
Clean Data
Increasingly there is a shift towards greater utilisation of practice software. As Divisions continue to roll-out IM tools there is a marked shift from the Commonwealth to expand MBS item numbers into parallel streams of Chronic Disease Management (CDM) and Preventive Care.
The Division can assist you in ways to better utilise your practice software. This is irrespective of whether you use MD or other clinical software. Clean data is where you start and where the Division can provide assistance. As the suite of MBS items expands into Prevention and CDM incentives, individual practices need to keep abreast of these developments in order to maximise their income whilst ensuring best practice in patient care.
Division staff are available to assist with integrating your practice into these incentives and providing you with access to IM tools that can provide an accurate snap-shot of current practice and MBS item number utilisation.
IM tools have capacity to guide procedures at the practice level into more effective patient recall systems, how to flag indicators for care plans and shared care arrangements, and provide information on access to incentive programs; for example the new mental health nurse initiative.
The IM tools all require clean data...garbage in - garbage out. The first step in cleaning up your act would be to have an audit of how your practice software is recording the data you need. PEN is new on the horizon and can point to some very useful indicators. You can start by looking at an individual chronic disease and then expand this to other chronic diseases.
PEN Clinical Audit Tool
In a practical move to assist GPs with clinical data improvement, accreditation, practice population management, target risk group case finding, and practice revenue improvement, NDGP is one of 25 participating Divisions in the provision of the PEN Computer Systems Clinical Audit Tool (PEN).
Pen creates progressive snapshots of general practice patient data and presents this in a meaningful way using a graphical approach that is intuitive and requires only a few minutes of time for GPs or other practice staff to master. It allows the user to drill down from graphical data to identify patients of interest in the practice. It points to gaps in data recording, and reports on achievement against key targets for your practice.
The easy to use Audit Tool gives practices the opportunity to roam through their data and get answers to the important questions that drive behaviour change in general practice for patient and practice benefit.
Click here to download [in pdf] an overview of the PEN tool. See how easy it is to view your own practice data in basic graphical format and drill down to individual patient details.
Filtering 'Recipes' available for the PEN Clinical Audit Tool
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Practice Health Atlas
The Practice Health Atlas (PHA) is a decision support tool for GPs, Practice Managers and other Practice Staff. The PHA has a focus towards providing information back to the practice on chronic disease, billing information and individual practices can benchmark their practice data with aggregrated, de-identified census data.
There is a business modelling component to the PHA which makes forecasting assumptions of chronic disease item number utilisation in order to predict potential income. The premises upon which these assumptions are made are:
- that there is capacity within the practice for increased Chronic Disease Management (CDM) item number utilisation;
- the practice uses their practice software at a level such that the PHA can extract data that is of good quality and is current. This then leads on to:
- practice software (and at this stage the PHA is limited to Medical Director) being used correctly. This entails entering of patient diagnoses in the correct fields of MD (rather than free-texting into notes), downloading of patient test results in HL7 format (where relevant) and regular archiving of patients whom are no longer regarded as 'active.'
The patient population (for the purposes of the Practice Health Atlas (PHA)) excludes patients with no post codes or with post boxes, and those where date of birth was not recorded. Where this is the case there will be a disparity between a practice's total population versus the 15-month patient population (which is what the PHA bases its reports/findings). Having a minimum level of clean data is pre-requisite to participating in the Division's PHA service.
Whether some retrospective data-entry for these fields into MD is possible is, again, recommended but not essential. The benefit will be a greater cohort of patients upon which the majority of the PHA analysis is based. The Division can assist you in ways to better utilise your practice software. This is irrespective of whether you use MD. Clean data is where you start and where the Division can provide assistance.
Practical strategies to assist in the improved provision of services to your patients are linked to the PHA outcomes areas and include:
| Data Quality and Management |
Team-based care |
| Pro-active practice population health care |
Clinical performance monitoring |
| Reducing health inequalities |
Business systems development |
| Accreditation |
Professional education |
| Marketing of Practice |
Practice Amalgamation |
Please note that while there are minimum levels of data required for the PHA, the Division has the Practice Development Program - Diabetes, Collaboratives Program and the PEN Clinical Audit Tool as excellent pathways to improved practice software utilistion and whole-of practice approach. Contact Allison Yates, Collaboratives Program Manager, NDGP, on Tel. 8480 4608.
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IM Resources
Victorian Statewide Referral Form
The Victorian Statewide Referral Form (VSRF) is a straightforward, easy to use, electronic template for GP referrals.
The purpose is to provide a standardised mechanism for referral from General Practice to state funded health providers. The format and content is somewhat different to a routine referral letter, but with minimal effort transfer of relevant information is easily produced. GPs are encouraged to use this simple template as a replacement for the multitude of service specific referral forms.
The VSRF is the preferred format for GP referrals to primary care services funded by the Department of Human Services (DHS). This includes: Community health, Home & Community Care, Aged Care Assessment and so on. The VSRF is also suitable for referrals to hospital outpatient services where a service specific template does not already exist.
Import instructions for clinical software templates e.g. VSRF+
Download Best Practice VSRF (34 kb) [word]
Click here to follow the link to GPV's website for instructions on how to find and use the VSRF and for import instructions, according to practice software type, and for the new (2009) inclusions for each of the VSRF+ referral templates - Maternity, Urology and Osteoarthritis Hip & Knee.
Click here to download a user guide for completing the VSRF.
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Medicare Australia's notice on electronic referrals - November 2009
Medicare announced on Wednesday 11 November that they have adjusted their requirements for electronic referral.
The new guidelines make no mention of digital signatures.
Instead, they simply require that a “stored electronic transmission is unaltered and unalterable”.
With the introduction of the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 and as part of the Government's Online Strategy, Medicare Australia is now able to provide the IT standards that Medicare Australia requires for electronic transmission, scanning and storage of Referrals to specialists/consultant physicians and Requests for pathology and diagnostic imaging services.
If you would like to transmit, scan and/or store Referrals or Requests electronically, please refer to the following Medicare Australia IT standards.
Notice of Information Technology (IT) Requirements under the Electronic Transactions Act 1999
for scanning and storage of referrals and requests
Notice of Information Technology (IT) Requirements under the Electronic Transactions Act 1999
for Public Key Technology (PKI)
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Practice Incentives Program (PIP) eHealth Initiative- August 2009
What/when-
- PIP practices only.
- Starts August 2009 for previous quarter (May, June, July).
- Application by end of April 2009.
- PIP contact person (usually Practice Manager) .
- $6.50 Standardised Whole Patient Equivalent (SWPE), payments capped at $12,500 per quarter.
3 Requirements:
- Secure messaging capability.
- PKI certificates (location and individual).
- Access to electronic clinical resources from the GP desktop (on HD, CD or web link).
Submit Application Form by 30 April, 2009 - Requirements 2 & 3 completed by 30 April and Requirement 1 completed by 31 July. If requiement 1 NOT completed by 31 July you MUST notify Medicare.
Key Documents required for this Incentive are:
Resources:
- Victorian General Practice Prevention Alliance (VGPPA) - PIP e-Health Incentive resources
The VGPPA members are: Cancer Council Victoria, Diabetes Australia – Victoria, General Practice Victoria, Heart Foundation (Victoria) and the National Stroke Foundation.
The VGPPA has compiled a list of links to current clinical guidelines for practices seeking to fulfill the 'Access to key electronic clinical resources' criteria 3 requirement of the PIP e-Health incentive. Click here to download.
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Medicare Health Professional Online Services (HPOS)
Medicare have launched the HPOS system. HPOS is a “one stop shop“ for accessing all the old Medicare online services and will require a PKI individual certificate to access. This is a phase 1 rollout with future upgrades and additions planned.
For more info: http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/provider/index.jsp:
Changes to your online services:
From April 2009, the way you access your online services will change with the introduction of Medicare Australia’s new Health Professional Online Services (HPOS) website. This offers a single entry point for all your online service needs.
To access HPOS, you will need a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) individual certificate. You will find the HPOS logon located on the top right of this page. Keep an eye out for continual updates to HPOS.
Two new services are available through HPOS:
- adding a new Medicare practice location number in real time.
- receiving bulk bill statements online.
Click here to download a flyer from Medicare on locating the ACIR site on HPOS.
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PIP, SIP and Care plans for MD2 or Genie users
Genie users: you need to copy and paste into the Genie Template facility.
Information sheets for new PIP items
More Asthma information: National Asthma Council Australia
Health Checks and Assessments
Click here for health checks and assessments templates.
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